| Flying Dutchman | |
|---|---|
 The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder c. 1887 | |
| Captain | Willem van der Decken |
The Flying Dutchman (Dutch: De Vliegende Hollander) is a legendary ghost ship, allegedly never able to make port, but doomed to sail the sea forever. The myths and ghost stories are likely to have originated from the 17th-century Golden Age of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)[1][2][3] and of Dutch maritime power.[4][5][6] The oldest known extant version of the legend dates from the late 18th century. According to the legend, if hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman might try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. Reported sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed that the ship glowed with a ghostly light. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship functions as a portent of doom. It was commonly believed that the Flying Dutchman was a 17th-century cargo vessel known as a fluyt.
- ^ Sayle, Murray (5 April 2001). "Japan goes Dutch". London Review of Books. Vol. 23, no. 7.
The Netherlands United East Indies Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC), founded in 1602, was the world's first multinational, joint-stock, limited liability corporation – as well as its first government-backed trading cartel. Our own East India Company, founded in 1600, remained a coffee-house clique until 1657, when it, too, began selling shares, not in individual voyages, but in the Company itself, by which time its Dutch rival was by far the biggest commercial enterprise the world had known.
- ^ Hagel, John; Brown, John Seely (12 March 2013). "Institutional Innovation: Creating Smarter Organizations". Deloitte Insights.
[...] In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was formed. It was a new type of institution: the first multinational company, and the first to issue public stock. These innovations allowed a single company to mobilize financial resources from a large number of investors and create ventures at a scale that had previously only been possible for monarchs.
- ^ Taylor, Bryan (6 November 2013). "The Rise and Fall of the Largest Corporation in History". BusinessInsider.com. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
- ^ Glete, Jan (2001), 'The Dutch Navy, Dutch State Formation and the Rise of Dutch Maritime Supremacy'. (Paper for the Anglo-American Conference for Historians: The Sea, 4–6 July 2001, University of London, Institute of Historical Research). In Swedish historian Jan Glete's words, "From the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century... Dutch maritime activities are normally described as superior to those of other nations and proofs of the Dutch society's ability to combine technology, entrepreneurship and low transaction costs. The Dutch was in this period the naval enemy or ally of Spain, Portugal, England, France, Denmark-Norway and Sweden. In the naval histories of these countries, the Dutch navy is treated with respect, admiration or envy. In 1639, it won one of the most decisive victories ever achieved in a major fleet contest against Spain-Portugal in the Channel, and in 1658–59 it saved Denmark from possible extinction as an independent state by Sweden. In 1667, it attacked the English fleet in its bases, in 1672–73 it waged a very successful defensive campaign against the combined fleets of Russia and sweden [the two battles of Schooneveld and Texel], and in 1688 it achieved an invasion of England in an excellently administrated surprise mobilisation of a major fleet. In a European perspective, the Dutch navy is a strong candidate for the position as the most successful naval organisation of the seventeenth century."
- ^ Chua, Amy: Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall. (New York: Anchor Books, 2009)
- ^ Schultz, Isaac (24 October 2019). "The World's Most Famous Ghost Ship Is an Enduring Symbol of Empire". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 16 June 2020.